Fact of the day

Information is the most powerful weapon.

Monday

Fact N°
2351

Women are more likely to look for torso movements when judging a man to be a good dancer.

A Northumbria University study recorded the dancing motions of 19 male volunteers -- mapping their movements onto featureless avatars to remove physical attractiveness from the equation -- and asked female participants to rank their dancing ability. Larger neck and torso movements were judged by the participants to be more attractive, as was bending and flexing of the right knee. Dancing ability, the researchers added, is also generally correlated with overall health and attractiveness.

Tuesday

Fact N°
2357

Sad people have more accurate memories.

Being unhappy brings with it a slew of adverse effects on cognition, including a diminished ability to engage in abstract critical thinking -- but evidently facial recognition is exempt from this effect. A study in Consciousness and Cognition encouraged happy or sad moods in student volunteers (by asking them to concentrate on either happy or sad memories, while playing The A-Team theme and Mozart's "Requiem," respectively) and found that the saddest participants had the most accurate facial recognition; the happiest participants were the least accurate.

Wednesday

Fact N°
2358

Adolescents who have romantic relationships are more depressed than those who don't.

According to data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which surveyed over 8,000 high school students, adolescents who become romantically involved are actually more likely to become depressed than those who aren't dating. (And not just because of breakups, either; the effect exists even when the relationship continues.) Males with more romantic partners, as well as males who had had recent breakups, were also more likely to suffer from depression. Both males and females who were romantically involved were more likely to abuse alcohol.

Thursday

Fact N°
2359

Browsing the internet improves your productivity.

Two studies presented at the Academy of Management in San Antonio concluded that concentration and effectiveness are actually improved in workers who have the freedom to surf the internet. The studies separated participants into three groups, then assigned a menial task requiring concentration. One group spent its break working on a separate task, the second group was given freedom to do anything except use the internet and the third group was given internet access. After all the groups returned to their initial tasks, the group with internet access was more energized, less bored and more effective at their tasks.

Friday

Fact N°
2360

Nice people make less money than mean people.

A study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology hypothesized that agreeableness would translate into lower incomes, at least among men, and tested this hypothesis with four separate studies. All four studies confirmed the hypothesis; the disparity was more marked among men than women.

Saturday

Fact N°
2361

Gonorrhea is becoming more resistant to treatment.

In a discovery both "alarming and predictable," disease experts have discovered an antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhea in Japan. The announcement came only days after a CDC warning that U.S. strains of the bacterium were becoming more resistant as well. Most strains of gonorrhea are resistant to at least one kind of antibiotic already; in the U.S., penicillin- and tetracycline-resistant strains have been around for decades, but they are now developing resistances to yet another class of drugs. The recently discovered Japan strain, H041, appears to be entirely immune.

Sunday

Fact N°
2362

Viewing attractive women produces a biological response similar to drugs or alcohol.

Neuroscientists monitored the brains of 14 men as they were shown pictures of women before and after cosmetic surgery (in which the "after" photos were of women with a more curvaceous hourglass figure than the before photos). Curvaceous women provoked a response in regions of the brain involved in reward, as well as regions associated with drug and alcohol use. Researchers intend to study reactions on the female brain as well; women are similarly drawn to portrayals of curvaceous women, though that reaction is more in an effort to gauge their own attractiveness.